Jama at SEDC 2016

Systems Engineers cite legacy RM tools overcomplicate their projects

Sam Schwab | April 19, 2016

At the beginning of April, Jama sponsored and sent a team to SEDC in our nation’s capital. SEDC is a bi annual regional INCOSE conference that brings together Systems Engineering professionals from the greater eastern seaboard to participate in a number of workshops and educational sessions.

As a sponsor we had in depth conversations with conference attendees about the importance of a comprehensive requirements management strategy. Given the location in Washington DC there was a strong turnout of defense contractors and US Government employees working on federal programs. This audience is tasked with building large complex systems that are often used in mission critical ground, cyber, and space operations.

Our conversations focused on the importance of promoting collaboration across teams to gain better alignment throughout all phases of development. With almost everyone having already been exposed to a number of different requirements management tools in the past, the number one piece of feedback we received was that Jama’s ease of use was an eye opener.

It was conveyed to us that the challenge with most existing requirements solutions is that one must be highly skilled in the tool to be comfortable using it. Because this is not a reality, what usually happens is that teams end up working outside the systems in traditional Word and Excel spreadsheets and then at the end of the project they stuff everything through in order to document accordingly. Often times this can turn into a documentation and traceability nightmare and defeats the purpose of having a system in the first place. Ultimately we heard that the main concern companies are faced with when deciding on a solution is usability. Adoption matters and it can be extremely costly when organizations deploy solutions that the stakeholders have difficulty adopting.